Barney BoBo, Night Pilgrim

Barney BoBo, Night Pilgrim

Pitch black. No moon. Overcast, hot and humid all day and the night chill has settled cloud fog on the ground.  My little pen light, the only flashlight I could find in a big hurry, is not much good. In the piney woods next to our house, sharp broken pine limbs stick out like some kind of midevil weaponry . The ground is all pine needles masking almost all sound.

“Awww-rr-oooooo!”

Kathy is fast asleep. Our daughter has her headphones on watching tv. I have been working with power tools and my ear protectors (things) on. 

“Awww-rr-oooooo!”

“Whah?”  What’s that dog doing outside?  It’s 11 at night. How’d he get out?

“Awww-rr-oooooo!”

Barney (BoBo) is a beagle. He was nine years old when we adopted him. Who knows about his past?  Shrouded in animal adoption mystery. Very sweet, shy, loves love and well … a dog. A beagle dog. Never barks, he howls.  Most hunting (sporting) dogs don’t bark. They corner prey and howl.  A baying sound that cuts right through the dark and fog, but unusefull for echolocation.

I have very bad knees. Old arthritic untrustworthy knees.  If I step in a hole or trip on a downed tree, both of us (old Barney and old me) are screwed. Years in the Boy Scouts and other wilderness adventures over a truckload of years, has taught me, “You can’t trust sound in heavy fog.”  I once got caught in a dense fog kayaking on Lake Erie.  I had a deck compass; my paddling partner did not. I knew if we just headed south we had to run into the shoreline. Lake Erie’s is huge and treacherous for weather changes. Sixty miles wide, well over a hundred long (I ferget).

My buddy keeps saying! “I can hear the traffic over there.  Yup, over that way “ indicating we should go to what my deck compass is indicating is west. Problem, the shoreline runs like a chalk line almost to Toledo from where we put in.  I insist we follow the compass; me and him arguing for a good hour.  I stick to my guns (compass) and we run directly up on the concrete public boat launch.  “Crutch!”  Never saw land before we ran into it. 

“BArNey!  Barney BoBo!!!  BoBo!BoBoc’mhere!”

“Ahroo!” Means, “I gotta rabbit cornered.” “Ahroo, arooo”. 

“Awww-rr-ooooo!” Is I’m so lost. C’mon get me.  I’m scared, where are you?  I know my dog. I know his howling vocabulary. That is my BoBo. 

All I get from my little pen light is a feeble glow-back off the ground fog as I trip over a rotting log and get a good swiping scratch on my arm.  My night vision is pretty good, but my overall vision is like 20/60.  I am aware of a our five feet in front of me and I can either focus on the ground or try to avoid the warrior trees. The blackness beyond my bubble of fuzzy grayness is total. 

Then of course the mosquitoes find me. Stumble on a log, scratched by a broken pine limb, swat a mosquito, step in a hole and snap my knee backwards.  Fun in the dark.  And my now I’m deep onto someone else’s property and out here in southern  virginia everybody has a gun (actually several guns, plus a mortar launcher,  cannon, air to ground missiles).  The local law says you can “shoot first and identify the trespasser later.”

I have just taken my evening old man’s meds and I have about 20 minutes before double vision snooze sets in. And I spot the shine off a small set of animal eyes. I know it’s Barney because I also know his eyes in the dark; I just know.  A feral animal would run away for one thing. But when I call his name, he knows it’s me and the little shiny sparks move towards me. He knows he’s in trouble, but he also can’t resist when he hears my voice. 

I take off my belt to make a leash and we snaggle our way back towards the distant lights still on in our kitchen.